WeWork acquires Flatiron School

10 months

WeWork, the behemoth co-working company valued at $20 billion, has today announced the acquisition of Flatiron School.

Flatiron School is a coding education platform that offers both online and offline classes to folks who want a career in the world of tech. The coding academy was launched in 2012 and has raised more than $14 million since inception, according to Crunchbase.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

WeWork CEO and founder Adam Neumann announced in a blog post that WeWork employees and members will now have access to Flatiron School courses both in-person and online.

WeWork not only provides space for blooming companies (and mega-corporations), to flexibly set up shop and work on their products, but also a community of folks who can network and support each other as they grow their businesses and their individual careers.

The acquisition of Flatiron School will provide those WeWork members an opportunity to expand their knowledge base and skill set, as well as add to their resumes for future opportunities.

The news of the deal comes just a week after Flatiron School settled with the NY Attorney General for $375,000 after operating without a license from the NY State Education Department and improperly marketed and promoted its job placement and average starting salary of its graduates.

From Neumann’s blog post:

Our culture is one in which we are always ready to do more, to learn more, and we are proud to expand our offering with this new platform for learning. In Flatiron, we have found a partner who shares our vision of connecting people — through space, design, technology and community — and understands that those connections are what humanizes the way we work and live. We are all students for life. I am excited to welcome the entire Flatiron School team of educators, engineers and innovators to WeWork to continue to learn, together.

Over the past few years, WeWork has focused on expanding not only its physical footprint, expanding to China and Japan as well as opening new locations in the U.S., but also on growing its online offerings for members. The company launched a Services Store in April, letting WeWork members pay for products like Slack, Lyft, UpWork, Adobe, and many more right from their WeWork account, complete with discounts.

The acquisition of Flatiron School is yet another valuable offering that WeWork can offer to members to incentivize them to stick around and grow the business from within a WeWork space. After all, WeWork believes that it can efficiently host departments of massive companies, such as the Microsoft sales team, alongside smaller startups.